


Maz's Path

by amyfortuna



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bad Puns, Force Ghosts, Gap Filler, Gen, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-16 19:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7282411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maz Kanata ventures to a familiar planet to find Luke's lightsaber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maz's Path

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



The smell of Dagobah - rotting plant matter and fetid swamp - hit Maz's nostrils as soon as she shoved back the roof of her cockpit, before she even loosened her flight belts and took off her helmet. Negotiating through the trees for a landing spot had been so difficult she was unsure how she would ever manage to get back out into space again, and she'd narrowly escaped landing in a swamp. 

Outside her little ship, she walked around it, checking to be sure it really was on firm ground, before heading off into the deeper forest. Her astromech droid beeped solemnly in farewell as she hoisted a small backpack onto her shoulders. 

"I'll be back soon, R7, once I've found what I'm looking for," she said, and started walking. 

Her sensitivity to the Force had never felt so strong as it did here. Takodana was lively and bright, full of life and nature, and her Force sensitivity there buzzed under her skin, warm and pleasant. Here it was harsh and loud, almost too much to bear, like everything around her was shouting in her ears, demanding to be heard. 

She recalled Luke, years ago, in her bar, at the stage of drunkenness where he made dirty jokes, saying he'd never understood what it was like to be truly surrounded and penetrated by the Force until he'd been to Dagobah. And then again, just a few months ago, angry and despairing, drunk to the point of violence, no longer carrying his lightsaber. He'd yelled, "Get penetrated, Maz!" as she had him thrown bodily from the bar, but true anger had been missing from his tone. He was trying to tell her something. 

That was the last anyone had seen of him. He'd been thrown out of the bar, stumbled to his ship, fiddled with the controls for a few seconds, then blasted off into the sky, never to be seen again. Wild speculations were going around - he'd flung himself into a star, got lost on the Outer Rim, gone beyond the edges of the galaxy into Wild Space. 

Maz figured he just didn't want to be found right now. When the time was right, he would reappear. So she'd taken her time, thinking over his words and actions, until it suddenly hit her like a bantha falling from a clifftop: she had to go to Dagobah. What she would find there was anyone's guess, but Luke clearly meant for her to go. 

After about an hour of carefully picking her way through the swamp and the trees, sometimes wading waist-deep through stinking water, sometimes scrambling over branches and shimmying down the wide trunks of trees, she came upon a little house, half-rotted like everything else. It was clearly meant for someone even smaller than she was, and the handle of the door came away as she tugged it open. 

Inside, though, the rotten aroma of the rest of the swamp fell away. It was like she was walking into a time capsule, a perfectly preserved tiny house. Tins of food sat on a small cupboard over a little wooden sink and a metal cookstove. She looked around. There was a tiny bed at the far end of the house. On the bed lay a set of small, empty, Jedi robes, and nestled within the robes, as if they were protecting it, was Luke's lightsaber. 

She reached out, brushed the shiny metal lightly with her fingers, and -

_\- A girl, pale and shaking with adrenaline, in a snowy forest, and the lightsaber flying to her hand, lighting up, fierce determination on her face -_

_\- A young man with deep brown eyes full of fear, sitting at a table in her bar -_

_\- A droid she didn't recognise, orange and white body rolling quickly along desert sands -_

She snatched her hand back, tilted her head, and slowly looked at the lightsaber for a long moment. Then she removed the backpack from her shoulders, took out a clean shirt, and carefully wrapped the lightsaber in it, making sure not to touch it again. Placing the bundle back into her pack, she took a deep breath, and turned around toward the door again. 

"What are you doing here, hmmm?" a voice said, and as she jumped, startled, a form shimmered into view, tiny and green, wrapped in brown robes. "My home this is!" 

"Luke sent me," she said. 

"Send you, did he?" the small green creature said. "Or think he sent you, do you?"

Maz sighed. "The 'saber. It is important. It has a destiny too, and that destiny is not to stay here forever. The girl I saw. It must go to her."

The small creature gave her another look, long and searching. "Know the Force, you do, though trained as a Jedi, you were not," he said. "I am Yoda, and once, long ago, a Jedi Master I was." 

Maz nodded. "I am Maz Kanata. Luke spoke to me of his Master once." She sighed. "I was tested soon after birth, but I was not strong enough to be a Jedi."

Yoda shook his head. "Understand now, I do," he said. "Strength matters not. Power matters not. A great Jedi, you would have made. Compassion you have. Kindness, you have."

Maz smiled. "We walk our own paths," she said. She lifted the pack with the lightsaber in it onto her back again. "And this must go to the destiny that awaits it. I will protect it until the girl arrives, the one it is waiting for." 

Yoda lifted a small green hand in blessing. "Until the Awakening, it will wait for her. With you, may the Force be."


End file.
